Everyone Knew This Would Happen To Concord

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stacey Henley

Published Jul 23, 2024

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Summary

Concord's open beta had only 2,363 players, far below expectations and indicating a lack of interest in the market.
There are too many games like Concord, and copying them is a path to failure.
With more trust and agency, devs could make better and more profitable games.

Last month, following the slew of previews, I ruminated on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:who exactly Concord was for. Its influences and tone felt dated, and the demographic it was attempting to appeal to have already hitched their hearts and their wallets to other trucks, or in this case, other live-service shooter games. Now that the open beta is here, we have our answer - Concord is for nobody.

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Or 2,363 people, to be more exact. That's the peak player count during Concord's open beta on Steam. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Throne And Liberty, also in open beta at the moment, cleared 58,000. Concord's number is low. Sure, more people will be playing on console, but Throne And Liberty is also on console. Payday 3, a notable recent flop, had 35,000 in its open beta. Concord is way below the lowest of expectations, but even that doesn't feel all that surprising.

The Market Is Too Crowded For Concord, And Had Been For Years

Green guy from the Concord cinematic trailer

Contrary to popular belief, games journalists don't hate video games. I'm not happy to see Concord failing. But at the same time, I have to admit that I'm not unhappy. If I had to pick a triple-A game to fail, I'm going to pick the generic online shooter every time. It would be a lie to say I feel nothing for this game - I feel a sliver of contempt. Contempt that Sony, so long built on innovative ideas, boundary breaking technology, and rich storytelling and experiences, has been reduced to pumping out live-service cash cows chasing trends that are already dead.

It's nothing against Concord personally, but there are 50 games like it already, and 45 of those games are dead. I mean, do the maths. 'It's like Halo and Destiny' is not a selling point. Halo is also like Halo, by virtue of actually being Halo, and even it struggled to make its mark in a live-service world. As for Destiny, if you want a game like Destiny, you play Destiny. It's also kind of like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Overwatch, but just read that Destiny sentence back and swap in Overwatch instead. It's like Mad Libs.

The numbers show that this game isn't going to make it. There is a tendency to look for the positives and highlight what's enjoyable, or fresh off a preview talk about what jolly good fun it was, but we all knew from the moment it was revealed it wasn't going to make it. Games like this don't make it anymore. The ones that made it are still here, and there's no room for anything else.

Good Devs Are Being Wasted On Bad Ideas No One Wants

concord core squad members — via Firewalk

The tragedy of all this is that the devs know this. In this week's Letter from the Editor-in-Chief (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:subscribe to TheGamer's newsletter to get one of those fresh in your inbox every Friday), I said any dev currently working on an upcoming live-service game is performing funeral rites with each line of code. The window has closed, and we all know it. The people making it know it. But the people telling the people to make it don't, or don't want to, because there is gold at the end of the rainbow for those who find it.

Concord will not be that game. Beta is not the defining moment of a game, and it could improve, retool, and resurrect itself. But that feels impossible if it remains a live-service hero shooter. It's less writing off than it is realism. Sony, bluntly, is better than this. And I'd be willing to bet that without the shackles of corporate mandates of battle passes and revenue streams, the team at Firewalk is a lot better than this too.

Game development is hard and the visuals and individual shooting mechanics of Concord are impressive. In isolation, this seems like a good game. But it's not meant to be a good game - quality is not a concern in worship of the almighty dollar. It's supposed to be a profitable game. And in chasing that, it has doomed itself to failure and indignity. This is a Sony title, so will stay in the headlines for a while even as the cold hard player count reveals the truth that nobody cares.

This is a classic 'I can see what the devs were doing and you can tell they tried' game, but as I wrote about as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leagu🔥e endured a similar highly public failure, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it just doesn't matter if the devs tried.

In the modern gaming industry, there need to be qualifiers to all of this. Gaming is increasingly becoming a 'one strike and you're out' business, which is far more frustrating when the devs are being forced to make things they don't believe in, watch them die, and then get blamed and fired for it while the suits who forced them stay in post. Naturally, I hope the team is not laid off as a result of this. If that were to happen, I would be highly sympathetic.

But when the devs who made 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush were laid off, I wasn't sympathetic. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I was angry. That team made a wonderful, original, beloved game, and it was all for nought anyway. With Concord, all I can think is 'I hope this is the last time'. But 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I've been thinking that for a while too...